In the United States alone, over 100 million people have chronic health conditions, accounting for an estimated $700 billion in annual medical costs. In an effort to control these medical costs, many healthcare providers have initiated outpatient or home healthcare programs for their patients. The potential benefits of these programs are particularly great for chronically ill patients who must treat their diseases on a daily basis. However, the success of these programs is dependent upon the ability of the healthcare providers to monitor the patients remotely to avert medical problems before they become complicated and costly. Unfortunately, no convenient and cost effective monitoring system exists for the patients who have the greatest need for monitoring, namely the poor and the elderly.
Prior attempts to monitor patients remotely have included the use of personal computers and modems to establish communication between patients and healthcare providers. However, computers are too expensive to give away and the patients who already own computers are only a fraction of the total population. Further, the patients who own computers are typically young, well educated, and have good healthcare coverage. Thus, these patients do not have the greatest unmet medical needs. The patients who have the greatest unmet medical needs are the poor and elderly who do not own computers or who are unfamiliar with their use.
Similar attempts to establish communication between patients and healthcare providers have included the use of the Internet and internet terminals. Although internet terminals are somewhat less costly than personal computers, they are still too expensive to give away to patients. Moreover, monthly on-line access charges are prohibitive.
Other attempts to monitor patients remotely have included the use of medical monitoring devices with built-in modems. Examples of such monitoring devices include blood glucose meters, respiratory flow meters, and heart rate monitors. Unfortunately, these monitoring devices are only designed to collect physiological data from the patients. They do not allow flexible and dynamic querying of the patients for other information, such as quality of life measures or psycho-social variables of illness. Another problem with such devices is that only the most self-motivated patients generate enough useful physiological data and call in regularly. Thus this method is not a good way to reach non-compliant patients.
Prior attempts to monitor patients remotely have also included the use of interactive telephone or video response systems. Such interactive systems are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,390,238 issued to Kirk et al. on Feb. 14, 1995, 5,434,611 issued to Tamura on Jul. 18, 1995, and 5,441,047 issued to David et al. on Aug. 15, 1995. One disadvantage of these systems is that they either require a patient to call in to a central facility to be monitored or require the central facility to call the patient according to a rigid monitoring schedule.
If the patients are required to call the central facility, only the compliant patients will actually call regularly to be monitored. Non-compliant patients will typically wait until an emergency situation develops before contacting their healthcare provider, thus defeating the purpose of the monitoring system. If the central facility calls each patient according to a monitoring schedule, it is intrusive to the patient's life and resistance to the monitoring grows over time.
Interactive telephone response systems, moreover, are generally incapable of collecting medical data from monitoring devices, such as blood glucose meters, respiratory flow meters, or heart rate monitors. In addition, patients tend to dislike the regular intrusion which decreases their compliance with the monitoring system.
Interactive video systems, on the other hand, cost around $20,000 for installation and are prohibitively expensive for the majority of patients. It is also difficult to identify each patient uniquely using this system.
A further disadvantage of these conventional interactive response systems is that they are aimed at a single user, thus preventing any multi-user capabilities. Interactive video response systems are too expensive to install for a single user. Interactive telephone response systems can be used for more than one member of a household, but it is often difficult to distinguish between the different patients. These characteristics, in conjunction with the fact that patients using the conventional interactive response systems do not usually exhibit regular use patterns, means that the patient data collected is statistically unreliable. Thus, these systems are not equipped to handle patient data collection and tracking.
Also, as conventional interactive response systems are intended for use in a patient's home, they are not suited for use in public areas. Their single user nature makes them ill-equipped to handle a large volume of users. Touch screen kiosks, which are commonly used in lobbies of public buildings to disseminate information, are difficult to individualize for a patient and are also very expensive. In addition, kiosks are self-contained and not designed to work with other separate information systems, such as the Internet or a healthcare provider's information system.